Begin with the connection to William Gibson through science fiction:

Both writing around 1984, and influenced by all the discussion of 1984 at that time. But Atwood closer to Orwell in that her main interest is in politics and in individual characters, rather than technology and types as in Gibson.

Atwood does a bit with computers, but doesn’t make them at all central. The time of The Handmaid’s Tale is around 1995–technology hasn’t changed much, and even seems to have gone backward–simpler way of life, conservative values such as needlework for women.

Film of Handmaid’s Tale used contemporary cars, etc. Basic idea of the novel: what if we lived in the same world as now, but under a fundamentalist tyranny?

One exception to this is the premise of a radical drop in fertility, so that the imperative of reproduction serves to justify totalitarian rule and the reduction of women to breeders. Cyberpunk also assumes radical changes in social life caused by environmental disease, but mainly projects forward from the example of AIDS.

In reality, there may be a fertility crisis–but a male one. BMJ 13 Aug 1994, p. 476: male sperm count falls from 128 for men born in the 40s to 75 for men born in the 60s. Reasons may be environmental, but not known for certain.

Interesting to re-write Handmaid’s Tale the other way round–only a few men still fertile, exalted and controlled at the same time.

Atwood doesn’t disagree with the main premise of dystopian sci fi, that environmental and political disasters will create an unpleasant future–but the macho potential of such change is entirely negative for her. None of cyberpunk’s relish for "boys and their toys"–interest in weapons and in the potential for uncontrolled masculine self-assertion.

A postmodernist work in that gender particularity is foregrounded and becomes more extreme–the fact that gender has become just a style doesn’t preclude its being constructed around harsh forms of difference. At the same time, as we will see, Atwood conveys a mixed message:Handmaid’s Tale is both a strongly feminist novel, and one that assumes a deeply problematic relation between femaleness (biological) and femininity (social).

Hosea’s denunciation of Gilead: Hosea 6.8-10. But it was also a land of spices, part of the promised land.

Like 1984, the target of Handmaid’s Tale is ambiguous, only more so. Orwell’s book was taken as a satire on Stalinist Russia, on fascism, and even on the Socialist government elected in Britain in 1945.

Atwood casts her net even wider:

Moslem fundamentalism–especially the revolutionary regime in Iran (282).

Fundamentalist Christians in the contemporary U.S. -– family values, opposition to abortion.

Witch-hunts in 17th century New England (where the novel is set–Atwood a graduate student at Harvard).

Nazism (hanging those who resist on meat-hooks; experiments with reproduction)

The Cultural Revolution in China (sending people to work in the countryside; intellectual conformity)

Medieval society (stratification by status and occupation; superstition, religious fanaticism, mindless conservatism)

The Soviet Union under Stalin (tyranny of the collective, denunciation of anyone who thinks differently or has contact with foreigners)

The Soviet Union in the 80s (development of the nomenklatura, a privileged class with access to scarce goods and practising secret corruption)

Boarding schools and similar "total institutions" inside liberal societies–Atwood is interested in cruelty and extremism within apparently normal places like school or home.

On the political level, also, Atwood shows women–like the "Aunts"–to be quite capable of betrayals and atrocities (290: "control of the indigenous by members of their own group"). Politics is not viewed as Virginia Woolf does, as a domain exclusively male. Might be easier to accept the novel if evil could be localised by gender, nationality, or some other clear line that would allow us to dissociate from it. But part of A’s premise is that normal, everyday, liberal North American society is capable of going that way too.

Atwood’s political message (or problem that she raises):

1. Atrocity and injustice are normal, in the sense of being common and frequent.

2. Political power corrupts, or else evil people are drawn to power–much of humanity has been ruled by psychopaths in the 20th century.

3. However, Atwood is more concerned with the psychopathic follower rather than leader–no Big Brother in Gilead, and the Commander is a relatively mild figure. We never go into the headquarters of the "Eyes," no room 101.

4. Closest analogy is perhaps with a country like France under the Nazi occupation–most people are quiet and try to survive, some take pleasure in expressing their sadism and love of power, some resist.

5. Perhaps a feminine view of politics, seen from below, interest in the personal element. How does rationing work? What are the micropolitics of the individual household?

6. Opposition to the tyranny of Gilead arises from small individual acts of resistance, like whispering after lights out, which then organises itself. No external allies, system produces its own opposition and instability.

7. Other side of this is the corruption of the rulers, like the Jezebel club–analogy with the corruption of the communist ruling class.

Totalitarian regimes can either be defeated from outside, or rot from within. But the latter is not much comfort, because no rival principle is involved–just the baser side of human nature asserting itself. Or, at least, that’s how fanatics would see it–in the West, that "baseness" is normalised–not mere greed, but the desire for personal enrichment that drives the entire system.

To the religious-minded, this creates a spiritual vacuum that needs to be filled–similarly with utopians of the left (egalitarianism) or right (war & national self-assertion more important than economics). Johnson: "Men are seldom so innocently employed as in making money."

But money and luxury are also passions–example of U.S. televangelists, financial corruption goes along with sexual.

Summary: Pieixoto: "there was little that was truly original with or indigenous to Gilead: its genius was synthesis" (289)

Atwood’s work for Amnesty International–freedom is one and indivisible, tyranny a constant of human nature, in various forms.

The feminist theme cuts across the universalist one (cf. 1984, people not categorised except as proles & those above them–in Orwell’s view, class cuts across nationality, ethnicity or gender).

If tyranny is always happening, then the oppression of women in Gilead isn’t specially significant. Against this, it might be argued that a) women have been subordinated in all cultures and, b) sexuality and reproduction must always be a central concern of any society.

The primary target of Atwood’s satire is, of course, old-fashioned patriarchy and fundamentalism – the "Subjection of Women," as the 19th century called it. In this respect, the novel is a cautionary tale against contemporary "back lash" or reaction against the gains of feminism.

Mode of de-familiarisation – take some part of culture that we consider normal, exaggerate it, and show what its underlying premises are.

Calling a woman "Offred" isn’t really different from a woman taking her husband’s surname when she marries – cf "Jonsonsdottir" in Iceland.

Take baby showers or tossing the bouquet at a wedding and link them more directly to celebration of biological function.

Broad strategy of de-familiarisation is to borrow features from the totalitarian regimes already described, and show them implemented here in North America – the same strategy as Orwell’s in 1984. If it happened there, it can happen here – and this is what it will look like. The novelty in Atwood is to substitute women for previous target groups like Jews in Germany (cf. 188) or kulaks in the Soviet Union – first strip them of their rights and privileges, then define them as essentially inferior, then proceed to a final solution.

This can’t be actual extermination, since women are still needed for reproduction, domestic work, and recreation – in one sense, women have been disposed of; in another, they are still at the center of the society; and out of this position arise the most challenging ambiguities and contradictions of the Gileadan regime.

Handmaid’s Tale consists of a foreign war – men against women – and a civil war: between opposing ideas of what it is to be female. This civil war even extends to the inner conflicts of the heroine, Offred. To understand this, we need to look at a brief history of modern feminism:

Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)–the "human rights" tradition whereby women should have equal rights and opportunities with men. This leads on to the suffrage movements of the early 20th century and to the revival of contemporary feminism in the late 60s. "Equality feminism"

Another tradition within feminism, "female feminism," emphasises women’s common interests as separate from men. Virginia Woolf sees the political sphere as "boys and their toys," emphasises pacifism and personal relations. After the 60s, "female feminism" encourages separate development and solidarity around a distinctive female identity, analogous to the rise of multiculturalism.

Series of linked oppositions:

Universalism Particularism

Equality Equity

Similarity Difference

Assimilation Distinctiveness

Symmetrical Complementary

Culture Biology

p. 290: "control of the indigenous by members of their own group." Yes, but Atwood is also examining the uneasy relation between "female feminism" and fundamentalism.

58-59: Offred and her body: "I don’t want to look at something that determines me so completely."

36, women’s book-burning, hanging from hooks

31, bodies hanging from hooks on the wall

Question of cosmetics, and of sexual artifice in general – is it unnatural for women to use them? or is it natural for the female to exaggerate her difference from the male, in order to entice him?

216, putting on cosmetics for Jezebel’s

222, Nature demands variety, for men

["the night is my time out" (35) – impossibility of controlling the imagination, even after you’ve suppressed the visible manifestations of it such as books, adornment, etc.]

Conclusion: a feminist/multiculturalist utopia, though perhaps not without its own ironies.